Chapter 31 Cheap Wine
Cheap Wine
ELLA
I thought I was prepared for the pain. Breaking things off with Marc was always going to hurt, but tonight was far worse than something a few processed snacks and bed rot can solve.
Relegating our relationship to the chirpy, heatless boundaries of friendship isn’t a paper cut.
This time, it feels like a folded steel blade dividing my flesh from my bones.
My first thought is to numb these emotions with gaming, rounding up enough of our team to do a late-night SquadRun campaign, and sacrifice an unheard-of number of life points as I drive pitilessly toward the goal. Rescue the princess. We’re always after the flamen princess.
No one is happy when we log off, and the night stretches ahead of me with nothing to do but think. No, thank you. So I shrug on my hoodie and reach for my wallet. I race down the staircase and almost crash into Caroline Tiele crossing the Great Hall.
She curtsies, apologizing for my clumsiness, and her gaze sharpens on my face. I will not cry.
“Ma’am—”
“Ella,” I snap. “You’re older than I am.”
She’s silent so long that blood drains out of my cheeks and guilt rises out of my mouth. Vede. “I’m sorry, Vrouw Tiele. I didn’t mean— I’m not in a good place and…and… I’m sorry.”
My voice rises higher and higher with each word.
She should accept the crumb and retreat into the hedgerow of propriety, pretending she doesn’t see anything that goes on around here.
Instead, she plucks at her lip with a row of endearingly uneven teeth and steps beyond the clear boundaries separating a royal princess from the palace help.
“Caroline,” she corrects. “Where are you headed?”
“To get a drink somewhere.”
“The palace has quite a lot of alcohol.”
“I can’t stay here. I know what you’re going to say,” I start, heading off her judgement.
“Really?”
“Yes. You’re going to tell me I can’t shatter the illusion that we are a family who has its crap together.”
She laughs. It’s small but it’s the most human sound I’ve ever heard from her.
“No one following the press reports this year is laboring under that delusion.” She sighs and tucks her hair back.
“Listen. I’ve had a long day doing crisis management for your sister.
I don’t really want to spend tomorrow managing the headlines if you get smashed in some club. ”
There’s another human admission. I thought there was no royal mess Caroline Tiele wasn’t prepared to clean up. “No. You’re right. You are. I should return to my suite and go back to being Sondmark’s favorite princess.”
She glances over her shoulder. “I live at the bottom of the hill if you want to do it at my flat. The choices aren’t special—some cans of beer and a few bottles of cheap wine—but I know how to keep a secret.”
Caroline and I aren’t buddy-buddy. She’s both indispensable to my mother and a completely unknown quantity, but standing here, I feel all the things I’ve messed up flooding in around me.
I can’t message Alix about her own brother.
My sisters are cocooned in frothy bubbles of romantic contentment, I don’t want any of the Saint Sissela girls to remember this, and the rest of my friends are chronically online.
The thing is, when things get this bad, I usually text Marc.
“Cheap wine?” I ask.
“The perfect vintage to drown your troubles.”
“You have troubles too?”
“I meant generally,” she says, shaking her keys. She turns on her heel and I follow.
Everything about Caroline is modest—the length of her skirt, the height of her heels, the color of her car, an elderly gray Ciprio kept in immaculate state—and I feel a little like a forest troll trotting after her.
My red hair is wild, my jeans are ripped, and my emotional state is best described as “Smash Everything”.
We drive in silence, and she turns into a square lined on three sides with tall, beautifully-maintained townhouses from the time when Sondish cloth merchants ruled Europe.
Along the fourth side runs a shallow channel of the Handsel River, improved by mature plane trees and a stone riverwalk.
I’ve been here before. Several schoolmates come from this neighborhood, and Dahlia’s flat is on the south side of the square.
Caroline slots her car into a narrow mews and leads me to a rococo townhouse, the stone exterior shell pink.
Bypassing the grand entry stairs, she steps down to a narrow landing where an old servant’s entrance has been improved with a door of heavy beveled glass panes, the woodwork painted glossy, expensive black.
She slots a key into the lock and pauses.
“Listen,” she says, her chin dipping towards her shoulder, “I can be whatever you need right now. Would you prefer it if I pretended I didn’t know about Neerheid van Heyden and how much he shows up on the palace security logs?
I don’t have anyone to tell,” she says, pushing through the door.
“I can’t pretend,” I say, following her.
I don’t know what to expect of her flat.
Maybe a crisply modern space with a few personal touches.
Maybe a version of her tasteful office at the palace, but on a larger scale.
It is neither of those things. We squeeze past a tiny entry table, and Caroline drops her keys into a pretty teacup with blue and yellow flowers.
We enter a small sitting room where there’s a row of windows, framed with net curtains, above a slouchy sofa.
Tucked in a corner is a tiny kitchenette: just a short bank comprising a few cupboards, a sink and a stove.
A small refrigerator hums on the end. I recognize from my time in college that Caroline’s flat is how you decorate when most of your furniture has been dragged off of the street or sourced second-hand from online sellers who give you a pick-up window from six to seven on a Wednesday night.
“Give me a second to change and wash up?” she says.
I nod, and she moves through a doorway into her bedroom while I inspect the flat.
It’s more relaxed and cozy than I imagined Caroline would choose.
She has a round table with three matching chairs and an orphan, a bookshelf stuffed with paperbacks, and a wall of family photos I don’t have time to inspect before a knock comes from one of the interior doors.
I should probably dive behind the sofa and hide, but Caroline is a closed book—padlocked, tossed into an underground vault, and guarded by a cadre of loyal assassins. I can’t resist the chance to peek behind the curtain.
Will this be a boyfriend? Mr. Discretion Is My Middle Name? A landlady popping down to warn against gentlemen callers? I open the door to reveal a man about my age with sandy hair, a paint-splattered graphic tee that reads “Question Your Questions”, and a turtle.
“I cleaned Boris’s enclosure,” he says. Then he looks up, “Oh, sorry.” He shoves a hand in his pocket and looks over my shoulder. “Is my sister around?”
My jaw drops. I jab my finger at the turtle. “Wait—Boris? As in, ‘You gotta clean Boris’s enclosure or your sister—’” I stab the air in Caroline’s direction, “‘is going to open up a can on you’? That Boris?”
“How did you—” His voice sinks into a shocked whisper and he looks wildly around. “You’re Princess Ella. Wait—you’re…Trash Panda Princess?”
In a panic, I drag the door almost shut and speak through the narrow gap. “You never saw me,” I hiss. “Definitely don’t tell your sister. Stultes es, does she know about us?”
Does my mother know?
He salutes with a fist to his heart. He actually salutes. “My liege.” He pushes the door open. “How could my sister know? I didn’t know. What kind of filthy traitor do you think I am?”
“Linus,” a voice cuts in. I scramble back to see Caroline emerging from her room in a matching lounge set. “Out.”
Linus lifts Boris. “I cleaned him. It smells like roses up there. Come up if you want something to eat.”
“Pass,” she says, swiping a wildly expensive controller from her shelf. She tosses it to him with the carelessness of someone who didn’t spend weeks researching the specs, and he gives me a look of outrage. See what I’m dealing with?
She aims a nearly identical look at me when he goes.
“Sorry,” she says, pouring out a glass of wine and handing it to me.
She pours a small measure for herself and settles into the corner of the sofa, one bare foot tucked under her, the other swinging to the ground.
“I don’t think he has any real friends,” she continues, describing one of the revered founding members of our squad. Dragonslayer2 is a legend.
“He won’t tell anyone you were here,” she assures me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Caroline is no one’s idea of a soulmate, but I don’t have a better option. I close my eyes. “I did a deal with Marc van Heyden but I cut it off and now I’m dead inside and sure I’ll be alone until I die.”
“Deal?” She zeroes in on the most important word and a shudder rolls across my shoulders. Caroline can be terrifyingly like my mother.
“It was like a…a friends-with-benefits thing.” Ugh. Putting it into words is a nightmare. “Just kissing. Anyway, if my future is here in Sondmark, I have to start building it in healthy ways. I can’t do that with a man who isn’t going to choose me.”
“Here’s to wise choices,” she says, tipping her glass against mine with a clink. “You’re celebrating by getting drunk at my flat?”
I scowl. “I fell in love with him—”
“Again?”
“How much do you know?” I shake my head. “Yes, again. It’s the whole wheel of cheese this time, but the second his lips aren’t on mine, he’s like, ‘You’re the best. You’re such a great friend. Let’s play catch.’” I sock Caroline in the arm and she takes it pretty well. “I don’t feel friendly.”
“Maybe you’re just caught in an old habit,” she ventures. “Have you tried dating anyone else?”